


Aquaman

by DCFanUniverse



Category: Aquaman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 15:01:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13720152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DCFanUniverse/pseuds/DCFanUniverse
Summary: The King of Atlantis was not always destined for the throne. Cast into the overworld as a child and raised by a kindly shop keep, his worldview didn't stretch past the modest docks of the port town he called home. But always, no matter the place or the time, the sea would call to him. Soon enough his kingdom itself would come to claim its true ruler, and transform Arthur Curry into his birthright as king. But ascending to the throne and pledging his duty to the raging ocean does not come easily. He must wrestle against powerful foes sitting in his father's palace, enemies from the surface seeking the power Atlantis cradles amongst the tombs of its dead kings and hidden across the seafloor, creatures lurking deep amongst the seastone mines, and even the abyssal darkness itself that sleeps within the ocean floor. Though most of all, he must battle with himself. Because after all, he has one foot on land and one foot in the ocean. Read along and watch Orin become The King of Atlantis, Aquaman!





	Aquaman

**Author's Note:**

> A celebration, a first time public viewing of the five year old crown prince Orin, gone awry when ancient superstitions place the King and Queen between a rock and a hard place. Defend their son, or risk an all out war with their people?

The boy's fingers clasped the edges of the coin. He parted his dirty brown hair with a scrawny hand. He narrowed his eyes at the profile of a long forgotten man, some called him a prophet, some a wizard, some a force of good and some a force of evil. The boy's mother told him to never associate with those who believed the latter. He held the coin up to the soft glow of light from a nearby streetlamp. Where he hoped the features would be clearer, somehow, they were still the same ridges and bumps of a man that may have looked like the greatest mage to ever grace Atlantis. The royal family bears the same blood he did, the same bloodline that raised the dome to save the people from the crushing depths of the ocean. A bloodline of heroes, he gazed in wonder.

He turned the coin over to greet the angular features of a woman trapped on the other face. Tails meant you invoked the wrath of the dark sorceress. Unlike her husband taking up the head, she faced the other way.

The boy's mother had told him that one was good and one was bad when she gave him the coin to tribute at the festival. He repeated her orders:

"One is good and one is bad, I'm giving you this to tribute at the festival."

It was something like that, he was sure. He wasn't paying attention, he'd run out immediately to look at it in better light. He'd had seen the other boys play with these coins in the previous festivals, where he could only poke in from an alleyway. Those children looked like they deserved the coins. No, not deserved, but the coins fit in with them. They were dressed in bright emeralds and blues and always, always, trimmed in gold with dashes and twirls and streaks in their brown or black hairstyles. The royal family was even more...words escaped him, royal? The King and the Queen and their little Prince Orin. He couldn't even compare, his family couldn't even compare. He lifted the coin and rested the rim against the bottom of his palm, clutching the opposite end as steadily as he could. The other kids did this too. He began to move one finger over to the other side and methodically spin the coin. It wasn't as fast as the others, and no one would call it a spin (they'd probably just laugh at him again), but if he sped it up in his head the glimmers were moving faster than he could see.

The faces always looked away from each other, but when it was spinning on his hand, they faced the same side each time. He couldn't tell which was which.

"There you are! What in Triton's name are you doing? We have to go!" The boy and his mop of brown hair jumped at the noise, his hand trembled and the coin flew off down the alleyway, through the overhanging arch connecting Mr. Kravda's Butchery and Mordenen's Mysterious Laundromagic, where his mother worked, and off into the darkest night. And in speaking of his mother, he turned around.

She had tried her best to look better for the festival. He had taken great care to notice but not say a word about how his mother was wearing her Laundromagic uniform. He could barely see the lines underneath her eyes because of all the make-up she'd looked for, but he could smell them because of all the perfume she'd found. Her hard features hardened further, the glare going from her son to down the street.

"I'm not giving you another." she said, arms folded across her chest. The crinkle of starched blue and white fabric attempted to emphasise her words. She crinkled her nose in retort to her clothing. Her hand dove into her mother's old purse slung by her side and fished amongst the assorted treasures and refuse that just had to make up the maze-like insides of any bag his mother owned. Moments later a coin appeared, dredged from the depths like a crane with cracked skin went digging into the abyss of a handbag. She sighed, "I'm not giving you another," and motioned for the boy to take the coin. She then set off at a brisk pace down the street, following the very beginnings of music from the tweaking of instruments before the clash of concordant sound. The boy with the dirty brown hair held the coin in both hands as he ran after her.

 

"In Poseidon's name we celebrate," bellowed the voice of King Trevis, ruler of the seas, "for bringing us peace and joy in the light of day and the shade of night! He is the shield that protects us from the weight of the world bearing down on us, and I am prouder than ever more that I wear his crest and that my son, Prince Orin, and his son after him, will do the same." He turned to his wife, raised an eyebrow and grinned.

Amongst the throng of people draped in a spectrum of colours ranging from fine to faded he did not know surrounding the stalls and the staff surveying the royal banquet table, stiff and stapled to their uniforms, none were more distant to him in that moment than his wife. "I don't know what to say," said Queen Atlanna, ruler of the king. She held her hand against her cheek so her fingers could cover the side of her face, perhaps in shame, but King Trevis would never notice something as subtle as that. "It's got more pomp than the people who decorated the square." She resigned herself to listen to the dim murmur of trinket trades and the haggling of fried squid.

"You say that like it's a bad thing, the people would love it." he said as Atlanna rolled her eyes, leaning against the back of his chair in preparation for a slump of the shoulders. "What do you think, little Orin?" he tapped the prince, ruler of something soon, on his head.

"Dad, I don't have a son." Orin chirped, folding the much too large sleeves of his dress into each other, knotting them about in confusion.

Trevis' grin widened and he slapped the white tablecloth with his broad palm. The reverberations could have tuned the cutlery to lesser known frequencies, possibly to the same wavelength as the king's bright red beard. It jostled and jumped and bristled all its own. Orin's hat even slumped to one side, but the Queen corrected that with a gesture so trained it was reflexive. Trevis noted her glare, "That's alright, son, you'll find out before long."

The queen's glare melted away. She grabbed the sides of her son's head, with the necessary delicacy so as not to throw the beige cylinder on it off balance. "Trevis, he is much too young for even jokes of that manner."

"You say that, but he's too young to understand them at all." the King smiled at his dumbfounded son's pale green eyes and unknowing smile. The side of his lip creased upward and pushed into where his cheek rested. He shrugged the motions of a silent sigh. "Do we have to keep the hat over his eyebrows?"

The queen adjusted the hat to the exact same position it was in before she adjusted it. A habit, the king had noticed, that was equal parts worrying and worrisome. "You know the answer to that one, Trevis. If I had my way I wouldn't take him out at all. What's he going to do at a feast anyway?"

"Feast?"

"Right, because a boy just pushing five can really give that verb meaning."

"It's all relative, my dear. A feast to him is just an appetizer to us, but it's still big enough for our prince." He rested his hand on Orin's hat and wrung it until stiffness of it wanted to crinkle. The queen shooed his hand off and readjusted the ordeal.

"Dad how do I get a son anyway?" Orin's head barely peaked over the edge of the table between them. For anyone passing by, the king and queen were taking turns petting a flexible piece of three-dimensional geometry.

"Oh dear now he's asking questions. You get to answer those ones." Queen Atlanna smiled under narrowed eyes.

"But you're clearly more fit for the job. A mother is the true teacher of the child, as they say."

"Who says that?"

"They imply it."

"And they being?"

"The people."

"Who, specifically?"

"Them."

"Where's Orin?"

"So you agree?"

"No, I'm serious. Where did he go?"

Out of the corner of the prince's eye he spotted a single glint of gold bounding down from the upper street with a clink. It had tapped against the redbrick side of the entry arch and struck the pearl lamp with a clank then zigzagged across the square's multi-coloured rings of tiles with a magic all its own. Soon followed after it a lady in blue uniform, like the nice people that gave them their food on the glass frisbees that mum told him to never throw again, but less well dressed and with a small boy in tattered red stripes trying to hide in her skirts. They both locked eyes on the coin as it slid and rolled its way to the banquet table, maneuvering the obstacle course of polished black shoes and and nearly dropped silver cloches piled with tantalising aromas.

The coin dove beneath the far edge of the royal table and both Orin and the boy snapped out of their trance. Orin clutched the edge of the tablecloth and leaned over, meeting his gaze with the boy's. Both in their capacity as children knew when to recognise that someone had lost something and was moping that their mother kind of scolded them but couldn't really tell them off because she loved them but had to put on a hard face and they were sorry that they made mum so angry but they also felt bad and everything was terrible and please don't throw the plates anymore. Regardless, Orin nodded at the boy at the far end of the square, hoping that somehow he would notice. The prince's eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed, he knew what had to be done.

The upper landscape was a myriad of silver domes amongst snowy white. Each half-sphere reflecting and bending his reflection or the reflections of others cast upon it. Orin ducked back down. Under was safer. He plunged under the flapping side of the cloth.

Much darker. Without the pearl light, Orin's sight would need a moment to wake from dormancy. His eyes darted back and forth across the underground. Soon enough he could make out slight bands of light outlining the edge, rippling in place to the music beating down on the dark white curtains above them. He could hear the panicked tapping of his mother's foot behind him. She didn't have to worry, he'd just give the coin to the boy and be back on his way. The long sleeves of his imperial gown protected his tiny pink hands from the cold earth, so his mum wouldn't have to worry about baths tonight, and his knees were covered by it too. It was pretty big and he was kind of happy it was getting dirty, but he wouldn't tell mum that.

His hands shuffled over the cloth membrane that separated his skin from the world, stumbling over it like someone had poured silk on the stone flooring. In a twirl, he'd found himself jumbled in amongst his sleeves and a slight breeze atop his head like he'd never felt before.

Wait. There wasn't any wind under the table. He looked up at the monolithic black pant leg of a server. His eyes followed it up. And up. And a little further up, Orin was somewhat short, until it met a face frozen in silence.

Someone else seemed to have noticed that the man's face was stuck in place, because they started crying. Orin giggled because his nose looked like a fat banana.

The musicians stopped too, probably to look at the banana man. Sound fell away from the stalls in waves, from the people at the innermost ones spiralling outwards, following hushes and whispers and some gasps. Then someone dropped a fried squid with a wet thwump and everyone started screaming.

Orin heard the table creak from behind him and his mother leaned over like a creeping shadow, cheeks paling.

"By Triton's ghost..." she whispered in his direction before her eyes had to rise to meet the drumming march of feet towards them.

 

High Priest Calrad of the Church of Poseidon rested his elbows upon the stone seperation between him and the royal family. It was made of the same deep blue stone as the rest of his chambers, the only distinction being the tale of Atlantis' birth etched into the tabletop. It was a desk in name only, as his work found him resting papers on more fitting surfaces. The tablet was for show, and he certainly had an audience today.

"Thank you for giving us refuge so quickly, High Priest." Queen Atlanna spoke between panting breaths. "If you hadn't intervened-"

The High Priest was focused on the man in front of him. "King Trevis, you know of the curse of Kordax?" Calrad began, lacing his worn fingers together as a seat for his jutting chin. The top half of the smallest finger on his right hand was missing, and there was a scar drawn across his left eye. When he blinked the lid showed the same. Trevis knew these were marks not made by an animal, but by men.

He sat with a straight back and ushered the voice from deep within his throat, "I do so vaguely, there is an intricate history to it, I am sure, but only the surface of it is known to me." He raised his chin, thrusting his chest outwards.

Calrad's arms almost unfurled, the fingers that had been taught and connected below his face unraveled and his hands rested upon the table far apart from one another. He leaned forward. "Then let me refresh your memory, and provide your son with information his parents withheld from him." His plain white robes leaned into the back of his stonecraft chair, and his hands folded once more across his sunken stomach. The lines of grey hair streaking across his chin and around his chapped lips moved with urgency.

"When our fair city was thrown below the waves by the Great Deluge, only two of our cities remained. The dome that protected Poseidonis then still serves us now. But the other, Tritonis, was shattered. The first King of the undersea Atlantis, King Orin the First," his gaze fell on the boy who had taken the ancestral name, who clutched his mother's soft palm in response, "had his people craft a serum, one that would transform our ancestors from mere humans into the Atlanteans that we are today. Our strength, our undersea prowess, our ingenuity."

"But not all were so fortunate," interjected the current monarch, "Tritonis' people fell under the rule of the king's elder brother, who promised to protect them, instead cursing them to become hideous creatures."

Calrad did not miss a beat, "And the worst of all befell the prince of the time."

"Kordax." Queen Atlanna whispered. Calrad's narrowed gaze followed her like she had just gasped for air.

He rested on her for a moment, letting her come to terms with the gravity of the situation. "Yes. A hideous being, transfigured into a green-scaled mutant. And by right he was the heir to the throne. A blonde-haired monstrosity that sparked the bloodiest war our records dare to show."

"And so the curse," King Trevis' eye twitched.

"And so the curse." Calrad motioned to the young Orin, resting his hand in the protective clasp of his mother, who herself was tussling her son's golden hair. The High Priest's features softened, the lines of his eyes creasing downwards and age stuttering into his voice, "Trevis, I have known you since you were but a child, I've seen you sit here beside your father before you for reasons far from this one, and I've seen you just as scared as your son. I know, and you know, that he is not cursed. His skin is as fair as his mother's, he could not turn green even if he was sick."

Trevis did not move, only the slightest shift in his beard was evident from a great exhale. Calrad took a breath in turn, "But knowing this you still hid his fair hair. Because you know that the people are superstitious still, even in old legends. How could their crown prince be a mutant once more? Imagine the wars they could start on that alone. I do not wish to see Atlantis reduced to such bloody turmoil."

"I am not going to give up my son."

Calrad sighed, "I am not asking you to," and his voice hardened, "there is no question."

The queen opened her mouth to speak and found no voice. A choking gasp echoed up to the vaulted ceiling. Orin tugged on his mother's arm, but she couldn't look down to meet his stare.

"He would be safe here with me, I can keep him in the church. No one would have to know, Trevis."

"I'd rather he take to the ocean than be locked up with you," the queen sputtered. The king slowly turned a glare at her.

"He. Is. Not. Going. Anywhere." His teeth ground between the sounds of words. "I am the king, my word is law. My son stays with me. Forget your petty superstition. He is my son and the prince of Atlantis." His fist slammed into the table, over an etching of Poseidon. Orin shuddered.

Calrad receded into his chair, the shadows cast by a nearby pearl lamp obscuring his face. "You believe you hold sway over the people? After you deceived them for years? Hid a supposedly cursed prince from them, against the very threads of their own religion. You've forsaken all they believe in and you say your word is law?"

"Mind your tongue, cur. My word has kept this city brimming, while your deluded cultists walk around attempting to brainwash my people into believing tired diatribe nearly as old as the people who made them."

"I'm giving you a safe option, Trevis, your forefathers would hesitate to turn it down."

"And I'm giving you an answer."

Calrad shot forward into the pearl light, speeds unbecoming of someone his age. The folds in his skin well visible to the royal family from such proximity. "He will be executed."

Trevis roared, "Is that a threat?"

"It is a prediction. The people are their own kings. They will start wars to avoid wars."

Trevis' barrelled chest heaved and he spat upon the ornate tablet that separated them. Shadows dug deep into the stone, creating a maze of stories woven deep down into the foundation of the block. "You're supposed to be a force of good, Calrad."

The man smirked, almost a chuckle played across his lips, "Good?" he leaned back, "One O too many."

 

King Trevis' hands gripped the firm golden steel of the railing. The cold numbness bit into his fingers, but he let it. Above and outward was the shocked silence of night. So deep into the day was it that not even a single streetlight flickered. It was that period just before the early morning, when even the damned knew to sleep.

"Come back to bed," Atlanna yawned, rubbing the flat of her palm across her eye. Her hair was loose and parts of it stuck up along the side, like she'd been inside a washing machine.

Trevis chuckled, "How could you even sleep." He leaned closer to the railing and winced, his nightgown being a poor shield from the cold. His eyes didn't dare to look down far below, lest the manicured rows of the palace gardens start looking comfortable. Instead they settled on the far off void where the colours and shapes of the houses meshed into one big dirty blob. He would blink on occasion, his eyes swearing that they had just seen something move in the murkiness. There were some things he didn't want to think about right now. In the depths of his mind he knew there would be consequences to his actions, some may even be bloody. But right now he could only think in inklings of proper thoughts. That he would defy the church, protect his son, turn the people to his side. There were no hows or means, just goals and ends.

"At a certain point tonight I just couldn't look at Orin anymore, you know?" she started, and looked down at her son once more. "What if he woke up and saw me and couldn't go back to sleep again. Then I'd have to look at him all night."

Trevis sighed. Orin's own room was synonymous with safety only the night before. And now even his nannies could not be trusted. It's not he or the queen wouldn't trust them. It's that they couldn't. Even a single mistake...

He gulped as he thought of his last walk down in the gardens.

"Trevis?" her hand curled around her baby boy's soft golden head.

"Mhmm?" he said to the still night air.

"Come back to bed." she said.

"Do you think Poseidon watches us sometimes?" Trevis mused. Atlanna sighed, she'd heard things like this before. Words like this came from her mother at the end of her days, when even her youthful fortitude couldn't save her.

"I don't think I can believe in that anymore." she played with one of the loose strands on his head. She could just pull it out, right now. Pull all of his hair out, then no one would have to worry. Her baby couldn't turn green or scaly or any kind of monstrous ever.

"You did?" Trevis asked.

"The church was never on my mind, if that's what you mean," she said with measured breaths, each one leading into a different hum. "But I did believe there was something out there, someone, perhaps. We just liked to give it names like Poseidon."

"Past tense?"

"Past tense." She kissed Orin's forehead then wrapped him in her quilt. The dim light across the room played across the shades in the covers and made them seem as grey and desolate as dunes on the moon's surface. After a while Trevis sighed and climbed back into bed, nestling by his son.

"I'll never let you go anywhere," he whispered to Orin's sleeping form, and held his son's hand in the cold grip of his palm. He could hear Atlanna's sobbing muffled by the press of the quilt. Quick and shaking cries, followed by long, deep breaths. For once in his life he could not tell if his wife was mourning or anxious.

Orin took in the slow, methodical breaths of sleep.

 

The tide had just broken as the sun crept over the edge of the world. Above the surface it was simply a spray of foam flecked with sparkles of gold. Beneath the waves, the shimmering ceiling of the sea was a filter upon the hued sky. Purples and oranges and streaks of morning blue glided and swayed about like they were being seen through melted glass. All while a piercing light crept along from the horizon far behind, a warmth that pressed so close even the near depths were distant.

She had never been this far away before. Her legs would normally kick and paddle against the tug of the current, but this close to the shore, where the tide could reach out and pull down tumbling grains of sand, the sea was calm. All she had to do was kick forward once and the placid current would let her glide where she wished.

Her naked feet touched the bottom. At least here, unlike home, the light would play on the surface. Pools of it pulsing and moving like they were alive. Just as the sky was shifting above her through the looking glass, the light coming down made the sand and gravel move to her eyes like the bottom of the vastest pool. She always thought this was the closest the soundless sea could come to warbling.

Her toes dug into the sand and she leaned over, clutching at the child in her clothing. She leaned down and pressed a little bundle of breathing cloth into the sand, firmly enough that it would remain in that small depression.

She planted a kiss on his forehead, and ran a hand across its golden hair. It would be the moment for a prayer, but she couldn't force herself to believe in something like that anymore. "If you are truly the heir to the seas, you will come back to us safe and sound. Maybe years from now, maybe even days, maybe nothing at all will be wrong. But I wouldn't let any one of those people lay a hand on you." She paused for a moment and chuckled.

She knelt down as if giving a confession. "They'll remember me for stopping a war, but all I want is to save my son. Maybe Trevis can find it in his heart to forgive me." With the prayer of a mother she kissed his forehead one last time.

And she swam away.


End file.
